Lost Souls

Sometimes you can go exploring the nooks and crannies of an actor’s filmography for an obscure gem or an unfairly overlooked film. Lost Souls (2000), starring Winona Ryder, is not one of those movies. Filmed in 1998 and scheduled to be released in October 1999, it was pushed back to February 2000 in order to avoid the glut of supernatural thrillers like End of Days, The Ninth Gate and Stigmata that were populating the multiplexes at the time. It was rescheduled again to October to avoid going up against the popular Scream franchise where it went up against the re-release of The Exorcist (1973) and promptly tanked at the box office and was trashed by critics. Despite featuring a visually arresting look by cinematographer-turned-director Janusz Kaminski and an engaging performance by Ryder, Lost Souls was plagued by a formulaic plot and cardboard cutout characters.

Father Lareaux (John Hurt) and his team, that consists of Deacon John Townsend (Elias Koteas) and associate Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder), arrive at a psychiatric hospital at the request of one of its patients, Henry Birdson (John Diehl) who obsessively writes pages and pages of numbers. He also happens to be suffering from demonic possession. The exorcism goes badly and afterwards Maya decodes Henry’s cryptic pages and discovers that it repeats the same name: Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin). Meanwhile, Peter, a successful true crime author, is covering the sensational trial of an accused killer. The writer is a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic that doesn’t buy the defense’s theory of demonic possession.

Maya believes that Peter will become possessed by the Devil but, not surprisingly, the Diocese rejects her findings, dismissing them as part of an obsession that originated from a troubled childhood. Of course she ignores them and tracks down Peter, trying to chip away at his skepticism about the existence of God and the Devil by taking him to see Henry only to discover that he’s in a stroke-induced coma. Maya not only has to convince Peter that he may be possessed by the Devil but also work through her own inner demons as it were, especially when she begins seeing things, causing her to question her own sanity.

Winona Ryder brings a fierce conviction and a haunted quality to Maya who firmly believes that people can be possessed and it is her calling to exorcise the demons from them. The actress does a good job of conveying her character’s obsessive nature through sometimes-fidgety body language. She also uses her big, expressive eyes to suggest someone haunted by their past, which we get glimpses of via a flashback of Father Lareaux performing an exorcism on her. She even transforms herself for the role, adopting an almost mousey, unkempt look complete with bulky, ill-fitting clothing and an earthy brown hair color. Ryder is an interesting actress to watch. She has some of the qualities of a silent movie star in the way she carries herself. She has a limited range as a thespian but knows how to work within it.

Ben Chaplin seems like an amicable enough guy and I don’t know if it’s just the roles he picks or it’s his nature but he has a tendency to play characters on the bland side and Peter Kelson is no different. There’s nothing particularly annoying about the character but there also isn’t anything particularly memorable about him either – and he’s supposed to be possessed by the Devil!

Lost Souls is one of those movies you can tell was directed by a cinematographer because he employs all the showy, stylistic flourishes that most directors keep in check on their own productions. So, Kaminski cuts loose with the excessive use of slow motion shots, skewed angles, extreme close-ups and adopts the same washed-out look he employed for Steven Spielberg on Saving Private Ryan (1998). Kaminski does stage a suitably creepy set piece in which a bathroom comes apart around Maya with tiles flying off the walls and foul-looking brown water pouring out all over the floor while Henry suddenly appears brandishing a large, sharp knife.

In 1997, writers Betsy Stahl and Pierce Gardner pitched the idea for a supernatural thriller to Meg Ryan and her producing partner Nina R. Sadowsky as a vehicle for the actress. However, she decided to do City of Angels (1998) instead. While looking for a new lead actress, the studio landed Janusz Kaminski as director who said at the time of its release, “It’s not the most ideal project, but no one will give me the most ideal project without being able to see what I can do as a director.” Winona Ryder soon signed on.

Ryder was drawn to the project because she knew nothing about the subject matter. She was also attracted to the challenge of playing a character that believes in demonic possession, something that she didn’t personally believe in. She also wanted to do a thriller. To prepare for the role, she met with Father John Lebar who had experience with exorcisms and she even watched a few of them on videotape. Ryder also read The Bible but said, “I don’t believe in the devil. Never have. I think he’s a very abusive tool used on children. I think that’s a horrible way to raise a child – through fear. But I respect people who do believe he exists.”

Ryder had heard of Ben Chaplin through director Michael Lehmann who had worked with him on The Truth about Cats and Dogs (1996) and with her on Heathers (1989). As a result, she wanted him to do Lost Souls with her and he needed a job. During release delays, the studio requested reshoots for the finale because they considered the original to be too abrupt. Two more endings were filmed before executives went with the original one.

Not surprisingly, Lost Souls received predominantly negative reviews. Roger Ebert gave it two out of four stars and wrote, “These events and others are related in a downbeat, intense, gloomy narrative that seems better suited for a different kind of story. Even the shock moments are somewhat muted, as if the movie is reluctant to ‘fess up to its thriller origins.” In his review for The New York Times, Elvis Mitchell wrote, “Too late to seize on any New Year dread – though at one point, Philip Baker Hall, as a faux priest, gets to say, ‘They had their 2,000 years; now it’s our turn’ – the picture settles for a muted hysteria and cockroaches flailing about on their backs.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “D+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “The deep questions Lost Souls asks are these: Can Maya save Peter? Does the devil flourish in the absence of a belief in God? Was screenwriter Pierce Gardner, previously a producer, struck dumb by repeated viewings of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Kim Basinger in Bless the Child? But decipherable editorial positions, let alone answers, don’t follow.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas wrote, “Pierce Gardner’s woefully underdeveloped script is further undermined by stretches of unintentionally amusing dialogue. Neither scary nor even suspenseful, the picture is swiftly a turnoff, and stunning cinematography by Mauro Fiore and elaborate production design by Garreth Stover do not compensate for the many flaws.” Finally, in his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe felt it was a “pretty dreary affair to sit through. It’s not even scary … Basically, it’s just a green-tinted, contemplative pseudo art-horror flick that can’t avoid such silly pronouncements.”

Lost Souls treads the same familiar ground already covered by countless other films, from Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to Stigmata without doing anything to stand out from those other efforts aside from some superficial cinematographic pyrotechnics. Ryder, as always, is interesting to watch and one wishes that she was in it more. In fact, a more intriguing movie would’ve been one that focused on Maya instead of Peter, delving more into her past instead of only the tantalizing tidbits we get in Kaminski’s movie. One gets the feeling that Lost Souls was probably compromised from the get-go and if the studio really had a strong movie on their hands that they believed was good they wouldn’t have moved its release date multiple times. The end result features a solid performance by Ryder but little else.

SOURCES

Ascher-Walsh, Rebecca. “Lost Souls.” Entertainment Weekly. October 12, 2000.

“The Return of Ben Chaplin.” Movieline. November 1, 2000.

Vincent, Mal. “Goody One-Shoe.” Los Angeles Times. November 2, 2000.

Beetlejuice

Tim Burton's films are populated by outsiders and non-conformists with their own unique vision of life that sets them apart from mainstream society. It is this affinity for the disaffected that is perhaps the most personal aspect of his work. The success of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) paved the way for Burton's next feature, Beetlejuice (1988), his calling card – a breakout film that led to his getting the job to direct Batman (1989). It is also one of the purest examples of his distinctive sensibilities – a skewed sense of the world as seen through the eyes of someone who is an outsider.

Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) are a happily married couple living in a small town when they are killed in a car accident on the way home from running an errand. In a darkly whimsical touch, their demise hinges on a small dog perched precariously on a plank of wood that sends them off a bridge to a watery demise. The Maitlands come home with no recollection of how they got back. It slowly dawns on them that they’ve died. Maybe it’s the presence of a book entitled, Handbook for the Recently Deceased (“It reads like stereo instructions,” Adam laments) or maybe it’s when he steps out of the house and finds himself in a nightmarish realm populated by a gigantic sandworm.

At first, Barbara and Adam think they’re in some kind of heaven – getting to spend eternity in a home they love, but their idyllic existence is shattered when the Deetzes arrive and move in. Delia (Catherine O’Hara) fancies herself an artist (“This is my art and it is dangerous!” is a priceless bit she says in describing her work), but is actually quite awful. Her husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones) is a crass former real estate developer. Lydia (Winona Ryder) is their daughter, a brooding girl decked out all in black and who lives by the credo, “My life is a dark room. One big dark room.” Only she can see the Maitlands (“I myself am strange and unusual.”) and becomes sympathetic to their plight.

Thrown into the mix is Otho (Glenn Shadix), a trendy hipster interior decorator (“So few clients are able to read my mind. They just aren’t open to the experience.”) that helps Delia transform the Maitland house into a Yuppie nightmare. Barbara and Adam want to get rid of the Deetzes and seek help from the afterlife. First, they go to a kind of Department of Motor Vehicles from the beyond and are assigned a caseworker by the name of Juno (Sylvia Sidney) who gives them some advice.

The waiting room on the way to meet Juno is an amusing tableau of grotesques, from a woman cut in half to a man with a shrunken head to a man with a shark still attached to his leg. It is all of these little touches that bring the afterlife scenes vividly to life and are so memorable, like the sickly yellow and green lighting scheme that portrays it as some kind of bureaucratic hell, or when Juno has a cigarette and the smoke exits the slit around her neck.

When her advice doesn’t get rid of the Deetzes, but instead encourages them to stay (in a memorable scene where the Maitlands force the Deetzes and their friends from the city to lip-synch and dance around to “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte), they enlist the help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a self-professed "bio-exorcist" who helps the recently deceased from being "plagued by the living,” and acts like a perverted used car salesman. Not surprisingly, he has his own agenda, which soon puts him at odds with the Maitlands, culminating in a wonderfully surreal battle royale between the good ghosts and the bad mortals with Betelgeuse ping-ponging back and forth like a bee on acid.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are well cast as the nice but rather bland Maitlands. All they want is to be left in peace and see the Deetzes as an affront to everything they value. The Maitlands represent wholesome, small-town America and much of the humor in the film comes from the culture clash between them and the insensitive big city Deetzes. 1988 was a good year for Baldwin who showed versatility in several films, including Married to the Mob, Working Girl and Talk Radio, but playing such a “normal” guy in Beetlejuice was quite a departure from these other roles. Likewise, it was a strong year for Davis who also appeared in Earth Girls Are Easy and The Accidental Tourist, which featured the actress playing very different roles. Their easy-going charm and how comfortably the play off each other made Baldwin and Davis a believable couple.

Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse is the comedic equivalent of a whirling dervish – a force of nature as he makes the maximum impact with his limited screen-time. Betelgeuse is a venal degenerate willing to say or do anything to get what he wants. Keaton embodies him with just the right amount of manic energy. The scene where Betelgeuse meets the Maitlands for the first time and lists his “qualifications” is a marvel of comic timing and tempo as the actor bounces off of Baldwin and Davis’ intimidated couple. Keaton conveys a zany energy that recalls his feature film debut, Night Shift (1982), only cranked up another notch. Beetlejuice was the culmination of a string of comedies for Keaton and served as a fitting conclusion to an impressive run of films (although, he did star in 1989’s The Dream Team) and so it’s not surprising that he went all out with this role. He would go on to play Batman in Burton’s two contributions to the franchise and then tried his hand at more serious fare.

Beetlejuice was a breakout film for a young Winona Ryder whose Lydia was a poster child for young goths everywhere. She does a nice job playing a death-obsessed girl who isn’t overly fond of her parents and finds herself increasingly drawn to the Maitlands. Ryder’s performance goes beyond the superficial trappings of her character to reveal a deeply unhappy person. The most obvious character who represents Burton's loner motif would seem to be Betelgeuse with his outrageous appearance and worldview that threatens to dominate the whole film, but it is Lydia who is also the most autobiographical character in Burton's film. Lydia's all-black attire and dreary credo, "my life is a dark room," mirrors the filmmaker's own fashion sense and personal assessment of himself. Therefore it seems only natural that Lydia is the actual emotional center of this film, not Betelgeuse, with the true conflict being the resolution of her morbid fixations, while the larger battle of life vs. death rages on around her. The success of Beetlejuice would lead to her signature role in the pitch black comedy Heathers (1988).

Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones play vain, self-absorbed Yuppies that are the complete antithesis to the Maitlands. O’Hara, in particular, is excellent as the sometimes shrill wannabe artist who feels the need to impose her taste on others. She plays well off of Glenn Shadix’s pretentious interior decorator as evident in the scene where they go through the house, picking out color schemes for various rooms. Coming out towards the end of the 1980s, Beetlejuice can be seen as a cheeky critique of Yuppie materialism as embodied by the egotistical Deetzes who see the quaint small-town as an opportunity for them to exploit it for commercial gain. They are set-up as the film’s antagonists and we can’t wait to see them their comeuppance at the hands of Betelgeuse.

After Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Tim Burton was offered screenplays with the word “adventure” in it and found that they lacked originality. “I had read a lot of scripts that were the classic Hollywood ‘cookie-cutter’ bad comedy. It was really depressing.” He finally started work on a script for Batman, but it was put on hold by the studio until the director proved his box office appeal. Eventually, record industry mogul turned movie producer David Geffen gave him the script for Beetlejuice, written by Michael McDowell. For Burton, McDowell’s script had a “good, perverse sense of humor and darkness … It had the kind of abstract imagery that I like.”

Burton worked on the script with McDowell and producer Larry Wilson for a long time until they felt that a fresh perspective was needed. Script doctor Warren Skaaren was brought in to provide some logic. Burton ended up casting several actors with a knack for improvisation, which was incorporated into the shooting script. For example, when Michael Keaton was cast as Betelgeuse, Burton would go over to his house and they would come up with jokes, creating the character through lengthy discussions.

Burton originally wanted to cast Sammy Davis Jr. as Betelgeuse, but fortunately the producers rejected that notion. It was Geffen who suggested Keaton, but Burton hadn’t seen him in anything because he preferred to meet with the actor in person. When they met, Burton began to see Keaton as Betelgeuse. For the look of the character the director wanted him to resemble someone that had “crawled out from under a rock, which is why he’s got mould and moss on his face.”

Geffen had overspent on their remake of Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and so they allocated only $13 million for Beetlejuice’s budget with $1 million designated for its extensive special effects. To this end, artist Alan Munro was hired and worked closely with Burton storyboarding the film in the spring of 1986. They quickly found a common affinity for movies that came up with creative ways to create SFX cheaply. This translated to effects that were “more personal … What people will see are effects that are, in a sense, a step backward. They’re crude and funky and also very personal.”

Burton and Munro decided early on to avoid costly post-production opticals in favor of performing the effects live on set. Munro was brought back two months after completing the storyboards to oversee the visual effects when the producers realized it was going to be a bigger job that originally anticipated. To help out Munro, Burton brought in frequent collaborator effects consultant Rick Heinrichs. He and Munro spent the first few weeks of production filming tests to show the crew that they could create effects via “cheap, stupid, easy methods.” The crew wasn’t convinced and Munro remembers, “There weren’t a lot of believers when we were actually working on the film.” Heinrichs remembers that they ran into problems creating the effects live and this made for “one of the most exhausting and frustrating experiences I’ve ever been through.”

Beetlejuice received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “But the story, which seemed so original, turns into a sitcom fueled by lots of special effects and weird sets and props, and the inspiration is gone.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Burton, who seems to take his inspiration from toy stores and rock videos in equal measure, tries anything and everything for effect, and only occasionally manages something marginally funny.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley called it a “stylish screwball blend of Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody … Not since Ghostbusters have the spirits been so uplifting.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “There’s a distinctive feel to Beetlejuice, a deliberate Brecht-Weill jerkiness that allows satire and just plain silliness to play off each other most successfully.”

Beetlejuice has the polished, yet personal, handmade feel of Burton’s previous film complete with old school effects that included stop-motion animation, matte paintings and practical makeup effects, which have helped the film age well over the years. Like his other films, Beetlejuice is interested in outsiders, people like Lydia and Betelgeuse that don’t fit in or taking people like the Deetzes, who are at home in a big city like New York, and making them fish out of water in small-town Connecticut. The Maitlands are also taken out of their comfort zone of a living existence and thrust into the strange world of the afterlife.

Beetlejuice serves up many of the clichés of life after death and the supernatural and proceeds to gently poke fun of them in an entertaining way with a showstopping performance by Keaton at the heart of it. It remains one of Burton’s signature films and one of the best examples of how he managed to marry an idiosyncratic style with commercial appeal. Beetlejuice’s success would lead to a short-lived cartoon and occasional talk of a sequel that has gained some traction in recent years.

SOURCES

Salisbury, Mark. Burton on Burton. Faber & Faber. 1995.

Shapiro, Marc. “Explaining Beetlejuice.” Starlog. May 1988.

White, Taylor L. “Making of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and His Other Bizarre Gems.” Cinefantastique. November 1989.

Blu-Ray Review of the Week: Frankenweenie

Since the 2000s, Tim Burton has played it relatively safe, often falling back on his name as a familiar (and marketable) brand that mainstream audiences know and recognize. With the horrible misfire that was the Planet of the Apes (2001) remake, he directed a series of impersonal studio blockbusters that included the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Sure, there was the occasional, more personal effort, like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), but Burton only seemed to turn off the autopilot on animated projects like Corpse Bride (2005).

It seems like Burton uses his clout from big budget box office successes to make more personal projects. Case in point: Frankenweenie (2012), a black and white stop-motion animated film that expands the live-action short he made early on in his career into feature-length. Unfortunately, this quirky, deeply personal film was released around the same time as several other similarly themed animated films and only had a modest performance at the box office. It’s too bad really, as it is Burton’s best film in ages.

Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is a bit of a loner – a child who spends most of his free-time making crude, animated movies rather than making friends with kids his own age. He doesn’t need friends so long as he has man’s best, his dog Sparky. However, tragedy strikes one day when Sparky is accidentally killed. Understandably distraught, Victor is inspired by his science teacher (who looks suspiciously a lot like Vincent Price) and his love of horror films to resurrect his beloved pet a la Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Complications arise when his creation escapes the confine of his house and escapes out into the world.

Frankenweenie is Burton’s most personal and engaging film in years as it harkens back to his early work. Victor crosses the boundaries of life and death, which echoes the Maitlands in Beetlejuice (1988). Victor and his family live in the same kind of homogenous suburbia as Ed and his adoptive parents in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Victor makes the same kind of rudimentary yet goofily heartfelt monster movies as Ed Wood does in Ed Wood (1994). It’s no coincidence that these aforementioned films are also among Burton’s very best.

Frankenweenie also sees Burton reunited with past collaborators like Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice), Martin Short (Mars Attacks!), Martin Landau (Ed Wood), and Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands) providing the voices for several characters in the film. Behind the scenes, frequent collaborator Danny Elfman returns to provide an evocative score that pays tribute to the Universal horror films of the 1930s.

As the title suggests, Frankenweenie is basically Frankenstein (1931) for children but with plenty of sly references for his older fans (at one point, Victor’s parents are watching Christopher Lee as Dracula in a Hammer horror movie). Victor fits in quite nicely with Burton’s roster of cinematic outsiders marginalized by the ignorant masses that misunderstand them. The atmospheric black and white stop-motion animation has a texture to it that almost feels tangible unlike most of the CG animated films being made today. Sadly, this throwback to an older style of animation, coupled with it being in black and white, probably did not help it commercially but I think Frankenweenie will be rediscovered on home video where its audience will grow and its legacy will endure. Hopefully, its modest commercial returns will not scare Burton off from making more personal films like this one.

Special Features:

“Original Short: Captain Sparky vs The Flying Saucers” is the clever movie within a movie that Victor creates (with Sparky’s help) and is included in its entirety. It is a loving homage to alien invasion films from the 1950s.

“Miniatures in Motion: Bringing Frankenweenie to Life” takes a look at the stop-motion animation process for this film. We see how the animators brought Burton’s original drawings to life. It is wonderful to see all these people crafting a film with their hands instead of relying predominantly on CGI.

“Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit” is a brief featurette about a traveling exhibit of props and production sketches from the film displayed for people from all over the world to see.

“Original Live-Action Frankenweenie Short” was made in 1984 and was shot in gorgeous black and white. It’s about a young boy named Vincent (Barret Oliver) who decides to resurrect his dead dog Sparky a la Dr. Frankenstein. Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern play his very Leave It To Beaver-esque parents. Also featured is the late-great Paul Bartel as Vincent’s science teacher.

Finally, there is a music video for “Pet Sematary” by the Plain White T’s. It is your standard tie-in video with the band playing over footage from the film.